A picture is worth a thousand words.

Europe Day 11: The Vatican City & Campo dei Fiori

I just love European fresh food markets! So it makes perfect sense that we checked out Campo dei Fiori market, especially since it’s located less than a 5 minutes walk from our hotel.

Listed on most guidebooks, the market receives its fair share of foreign visitors. Tourist attraction aside, Campo dei Fiori is about as authentic as any Italian food market can get, with many of the city’s locals coming here to stock their kitchens.

Here you find heaps of ripe and juicy tomatoes piled high on make-shift stalls; prized dried and fresh porcini mushrooms; rows and rows of extra-virgin olive oil, truffle oil; bottles and bottles of the loveliest pates in many flavours, balsamic vinegar from Modena no less; Italian Grappa, wines and spirits abound, not forgetting those colourful pastas that come in all shapes and sizes. What we lacked was just a kitchen. Everything here screams ‘Buy Me’!

After a morning of browsing at the outdoor market (with a small and satisfactory loot to boot!) we made our way to the main stop for the day. One of the coolest thing about visiting Rome is that you can decide to pop by another entirely different country without leaving the city at all. Of course we are going to the Vatican City.

Contrary to much warnings about the long queue to the Vatican Musuems, we got in after a relative short wait. The “Musei Vaticani” as it is known in Italian, occupies a huge compound and is choke full of paintings, tapestries, sculptures, mosaics and ceramics which Popes have collected over the centuries. It would easily take weeks to see it all. Well, not that we want to anyway. There were simply way too many to absorb!

On our maiden visit, like many others, we had come solely and unabashedly for Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Joining the crowd, we meandered through the labyrinth of museums, taking in frescoes by Italian greats Raphael and, of course Michelangelo himself. His Sistine Chapel ceiling and wall at the end left us feeling breathless and immensely overwhelmed, as we sat at the viewing benches taking in the masterpiece of one of the world’s greatest artist.

And with that, we ended our 1 week grand tour of Italy. Where we had some of the best weather during the entire trip, met some of the friendliest Europeans around, had the best gelato and recorded some of the funniest and oddest incidents which we all will, I am sure, remember for a long long time to come.